


First Hunt

by Edonohana



Category: Werewolf Marines - Lia Silver
Genre: Cabin Fic, F/M, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Yosemite - Freeform, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 09:05:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2845523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/pseuds/Edonohana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were born and made for this pure fierce joy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Hunt

**Author's Note:**

  * For [opalmatrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/gifts).



Roy woke to the dim gray light before the dawn, and the sense that something had changed. 

DJ was back, but Roy remembered that. Even before he had come fully awake, he’d been flooded with joy and relief that DJ was there and well. 

Roy lay breathing in Laura’s lemon meringue scent and enjoying her warmth beside him, and tried to figure out what else was different. He was back in his own bed and he felt much stronger than he had the morning before, when he’d finally managed to get out of that sofa bed he'd been stuck in for days. If he listened carefully, he could distinguish DJ’s deep breathing from that of the others sleeping in the living room.

He sat up and stretched. Then he realized. For the first time since he’d slept in that bed, he hadn’t woken up clutching his gun so hard that his fingers had cramped around it. With a twinge of anxiety, he felt for the Raven that he’d made sure to load and replace under the pillow the night before. It was still there. 

Roy wondered if he felt safe knowing that DJ was there, or if getting the pack had filled some empty place inside him, or if it was the simple passage of time that had made a difference. He experimentally moved the Raven to the bedside table and imagined sleeping with it that crucial distance from his hand. Just the thought of it made him tense. With a shrug, he replaced it under the pillow. 

_Some day,_ he thought. _Maybe._

He bent down and kissed Laura’s cheek. She didn’t stir. Roy got up and padded to the bathroom. By the time he’d showered and dressed, he wasn’t the only person awake in the cabin. The pack sense was alive with Nicolette’s steely discipline and pleased anticipation of action.

Roy found her leaning against the counter of the open kitchen, watching the sleepers in the living room. Keisha, Russell, and Miguel had all squeezed onto the sofa bed, and DJ was sprawled out under a blanket in front of the fireplace, one arm flung out.

“I tripped over your buddy’s arm when I got up,” Nicolette remarked. “He didn’t so much as twitch. He _was_ in combat, wasn’t he— whoa, sorry.”

Roy realized that he’d left the pack sense open, allowing her to catch a glimpse of everything that had flashed into his mind with her words: _Charcoal crumbling under my fingers. Bitter ash in my mouth. Black flesh and white bone. Gunfire and explosions and under it all, a dead silence._

Roy shut off the pack sense, and tried to shut off the memory too. _DJ’s alive,_ he told himself. _He’s sleeping in your living room right now. If you want to hear him talk, all you have to do is wake him up._

“He’s with me,” Roy said belatedly. “If he’s around people he trusts, he sleeps like a rock. Doesn’t matter if you blast music or video games, he’ll stay asleep unless there really is something wrong, or you shake him, or—” He smiled. “Keep watching him, Nicolette. This is hilarious.”

Roy got the coffee maker ready, then turned around with one finger on the switch. He kept his eyes on DJ, who was still racked out on his back, and flipped it on. At the first bubble of the percolator, DJ bounced off the floor, eyes bright and hopeful. 

“Morning, Roy.” DJ trotted into the kitchen, opened the cupboard, and pulled out three mugs. “Morning, Nicolette. How do you like your— What’s so funny?”

Roy had never seen Nicolette laugh like that. He opened the pack sense again. Her amusement joined his own, wiping away most of the lingering horror and grief of memory. 

“You are,” Roy said. “You’re like those dogs that drool when the scientists ring a bell.”

DJ smacked him in the ribs, then handed him a mug. “Get your own coffee if you’re going to call me a dog. Those are fighting words for wolves. In the old days I’d have had to challenge you to a duel or forever have my honor besmirched.” 

“Really?” Roy asked. 

_“Besmirched?”_ Nicolette asked, her eyebrows raised. 

“Yes, really.” DJ examined the coffee pot, handed Nicolette a mug, poured himself the one inch of coffee at the bottom of the pot, and replaced the pot. He drank it in one gulp, then added, “You can tell it’s a traditional story if it comes with weird vocabulary.”

He wandered to the window, peered at the brightening light, and said, “We should wake everyone else up. The deer will only be out for another hour or so. Don’t bother showering. You’ll have to do it all over again when you get back.” 

DJ returned to the coffee pot. “You really ought to get another pot or two. There’s six of you! It must drive everyone crazy to have to wait for one pot to fill up.” He helped himself to the new inch that had collected. 

“Stop that, you mooch,” Nicolette said. “Or I might have to duel you for it.”

“Guard the coffee, Nicolette,” Roy ordered, and went to wake Laura with a kiss. 

That was his intention, anyway, but she slept nearly as deeply as DJ, and he ended up having to shake her. “Wake up, Laura. We’re going on a hunt.”

She squinted suspiciously at him, then at the window. “What time is it?”

“Probably around five.” 

“Ugh,” she remarked. “This better be worth it.”

She reluctantly hauled herself out of bed, making a face as her feet touched cold floor, and started to head for the shower. 

“No shower,” Roy said. “DJ says you’ll have to shower afterward.”

Laura made another face, grabbed some clothes, and settled down with her back pressed against his chest. “In that case, you can keep me warm while I get dressed.”

“Any time.” Roy kept his arms wrapped around her as she peeled off her pajamas, then wriggled into a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. 

His heart lifted with the thought that there was a whole lifetime of these small intimacies ahead of them: getting dressed, taking showers, drinking coffee. Together. 

When he returned to the kitchen with Laura, the rest of the pack was up, including a half-asleep Miguel, who was also not a morning person. DJ chivvied them all outside into the chill dawn breeze. Roy put his arms around Laura, keeping her warm, while DJ evaded all questions.

Grinning, DJ said, “You’re wolves! Follow your wolfy instincts. It’s more fun that way. And follow me, of course.”

With a shimmer, DJ became a gray wolf. Roy followed his lead, enjoying the sharpening of his senses. The air was crisp and clear, and the scents of his pack and DJ and pines and damp earth surrounded them. Soon the pack was loping through the woods after DJ, wind ruffling their fur and dry leaves crunching beneath their paws. Everyone’s excitement rippled through the pack sense, and though Roy couldn’t sense DJ, he didn’t need to. Being on a fire team was as close to the pack sense as humans could get. 

DJ’s ears pricked, but Roy had already caught the scent: musky, dry, sharp. A deer! Then they were all racing through the woods, everything forgotten but the thrill of the hunt. They were born and made for this pure fierce joy. The deer fled, dodging and bounding through the woods, but the wolves were a pack and hunted as a pack. Two went left, two went right, and three ran straight ahead. 

The wolves closed in. Roy didn’t know who leaped first. They were seven, but they acted as one. His jaws closed over the deer’s throat. Hot blood sprayed, and the deer was down. His nerves thrilled with the ecstasy of a successful hunt, and his heart warmed to know that his pack had worked together, and would share the rewards together. The first bite of the deer, his pack’s very first prey, was the most delicious thing Roy had ever tasted.

All too quickly, the seven wolves devoured the deer, down to the rich marrow within the bones. When DJ began to lick stray drops of blood out of Roy’s fur, it felt natural for him to return the favor. The wolves licked each other clean, then loped back to the cabin.

Roy sprawled out on the porch, too sated and lazy to go inside or even transform back into human form. Laura curled up inside the protective circle of his paws, and the rest of the pack settled in beside them. Though DJ was outside of the pack sense, Roy imagined that he could feel him too: content and companionable, like the rest of them.

They lazed together on the porch for hours, as the sun and clouds moved across the sky. But then the sky darkened, and a cold wind began to blow. Laura began to shiver.

Roy became a man again, cueing the rest of the pack and DJ to do so as well. They went back inside, where Roy lit the fire and the wood-burning stove. The cabin warmed as they took turns showering. 

Afterward, Miguel and Nicolette sat down in front of the fireplace and started looking through the movie listings in the local paper. Keisha wandered out, returned with the print-out of a journal article, and sat down to read. Laura and Roy sat on the sofa and watched snow begin to fall. Russell and DJ went into the kitchen and began to putter around.

“Do you eat shellfish?” Russell asked.

“I eat anything,” DJ replied. 

“I can’t believe those two are thinking of food again,” Laura remarked. “I don’t think I could eat for another week.”

“Give it a few hours,” Roy said. 

Laura snorted in disbelief. “I’m taking a nap. Don’t wake me up for dinner.”

She lay down with her head in his lap. He stroked her curling hair until her breathing deepened into sleep, then sat alternately watching the snow, his pack, and her. Miguel and Nicolette debated the probable coolness of two superhero movies. Keisha wrote notes on her article. Russell and DJ carried on competing monologues, DJ on the relative merits of Manhattan and New England clam chowder, Russell on the proper way to shuck an oyster.

How could Roy have ever thought his life was over? He had Laura, he had his pack, and he had DJ. He couldn’t drive or fly or use a computer or watch TV, but he could ride a motorcycle and run as a wolf. 

So what if even the glow of the coffee percolator switch hurt his eyes? He could tape a cardboard tab over it. That was what Marines did: they made do with what they had. 

“Want some more coffee, Roy?” DJ called from the kitchen. 

“No,” Roy called back. “I have everything I want.”


End file.
